Folk-rooted and folk-branched reviews, commentaries, radio playlists and suggestions from veteran music journalist and broadcaster Mike Regenstreif.

Monday, December 8, 2014

Top 14 for 2014

Here are my picks for the Top 14
folk-rooted or folk-branched albums of 2014 (including reissues). As in past
years, I started with the list of more than 400 albums that landed on my desk
over the past year and narrowed it down to a short list of about 30. I’ve been
over the short list a bunch of times and came up with several similar – not
identical – Top 14 lists. As I’m about to take a break from blogging until
January, today’s list is the final one. The order might have been slightly
different, and there are several other worthy albums that might have been
included, had one of the other lists represented the final choice.

1. Jesse Winchester – A Reasonable Amount of
Trouble (Appleseed). My late friend Jesse Winchester wrote most of these songs
in the wake of his first bout with cancer and finished recording the album just
a few weeks before he passed away after the cancer returned. As I noted in the
Montreal Gazette, there is a sense of mortality to many of the songs and the “album
ends with ‘Just So Much,’ a beautiful and deeply affecting reflection on faith
in God, on love, and on coming to terms with approaching death. A sad but
perfect finale to a brilliant songwriting career.”

2. Bob Dylan –
The Bootleg Series Vol. 11: The Basement Tapes Complete (Columbia/Legacy). The
most mythologized bootleg recordings of all time are finally released in their (more
or less) complete form in a beautifully packaged 6-CD set. Old folk, country,
blues and rock ‘n’ roll songs, covers of songs written by contemporary peers
like Ian Tyson, Utah Phillips and Johnny Cash, lead into early versions of many
Dylan classics and obscurities. As I noted, it is“endlessly fascinating” and “a great addition to the old weird
Americana that is so much a part of what folk music is.”

3. Leonard Cohen –
Popular Problems (Columbia). As I noted, “it occurs to
me as I’ve listened and re-listened to the songs on Popular Problems that it is Leonard the poet as much as Leonard
the songwriter that we’re listening to. Many of them are sung in a way that
suggests recitation as much as singing and some of them have musical
accompaniments that bolster the singing/recitation with pulse or heartbeat
rather than melody… Popular Problems
is yet another compelling masterwork. These are songs I fully expect will
continue to reveal more layers of meaning with every hearing.”

4. Dave Van Ronk – Live in Monterey (Omnivore).
The late, great Dave Van Ronk was at the peak of his form when this
unreleased-until-this-year set was recorded in 1998. The set list includes many
songs from the standard Dave Van Ronk canon but ends with a beautiful version
of Ian Tyson’s classic “Four Strong Winds.” Dave recorded “Four Strong Winds” on To
All My Friends in Far-Flung Places, but I don’t recall ever hearing him do it
live.

5. Tom Russell – Midway to Bayamon (Frontera).
A collection of rarities recorded between 1982 and 1992, most of them are from
a pair of cassette-only releases from 1985 and 1987, as well as several demos, 45s and unreleased live
cuts. An essential set by the artist I regard as the finest songwriter of my generation.

Also noteworthy are two other Tom Russell
compilations released this year: Tonight We Ride: The Tom Russell Cowboy
Anthology (Frontera) and The Western Years (RockBeat).

6. Eric Bibb – Blues People (Stony Plain). “As
I’ve said before, Eric Bibb is
one of the most inspired and inspiring of contemporary blues (and folk)
artists. Blues People is yet
another offering from the prolific singer, guitarist and songwriter that
reinforces that opinion… There is a concept to Blues People as its songs
– 11 of which were written or co-written by Eric while four were drawn from
other sources – capture snippets of the lives of musicians who have played
blues over the past century or so and place them in the context of the times
and changing times in which they’ve lived.”

7. Garnet Rogers – Summer’s End (Snow Goose
Songs). “Seven years on from his last album, and after years of thinking he was
done with recording, Garnet Rogers
has released Summer’s End, a
collection of beautiful heartrending songs about memory, grief, hope and love…
A quietly subdued tour de force.”

8. Catherine Russell – Bring It Back (Jazz
Village/Harmonia Mundi). Another in a series of great albums by my favorite present-day
jazz singer. Catherine Russell fully understands the roots of early jazz and
classic blues while bringing a contemporary sensibility and swing to her
performances. On Bring It Back, Cat draws on such sources as Duke Ellington,
Ida Cox, Fats Waller, Billie Holiday and her father, Luis Russell.

Jean Ritchie, who turned 92 today (December
8), is one of the great links between traditional Appalachian folksongs and
contemporary folk-rooted songwriting. “On the two CDs of Dear Jean: Artists
Celebrate Jean Ritchie, a remarkable group of artists – some very famous,
some relatively unknown – pay tribute to Jean’s legacy with loving, joyous
performances of 37 songs, many of them Jean’s own songs, others traditional
folk songs from her repertoire.”

10. Chris
Smither – Still on the Levee: A 50 Year Retrospective (Signature Sounds). Chris Smither “is one of those musicians who has continued to mature
and become more compelling with time and on Still on the Levee, a superb
2-CD set, he returned to [his hometown of] New Orleans to re-imagine and
reinterpret 24 songs” he’s written over the course of his 50-year career.

11. John Gorka –
Bright Side of Down (Red House). John Gorka writes and sings beautifully
crafted songs that capture the lives, feelings and turning seasons of real,
believable people. Along with 11 of his own songs on Bright Side of Down, John
also includes a lovely version of the late Bill Morrissey’s “She’s That Kind of
Mystery.”

12. Anne Hills –
Tracks (Hand & Heart Music). “On the appropriately
named Tracks, Anne Hills turns her beautiful voice
and highly skilled songwriter’s pen to songs about trains and people whose
lives are affected by them. Like almost all of Anne’s solo albums and her many
collaborative efforts, Tracks – with nine of Anne’s songs and four
well-chosen covers – is filled with gorgeous singing and seemingly simple yet
elegantly perfect acoustic arrangements.”

13. Shari Ulrich – Everywhere I Go (Borealis). A
lovely and lovingly-produced collection of songs that deal perceptively with
themes of nature, love, loss, and life’s choices. Having heard just about all
of Shari Ulrich’s group and solo work dating back to the ‘70s, I think
Everywhere I Go represents her best work yet.

14. Notre Dame
de Grass – That’s How the Music Begins (Notre Dame de Grass). With That’s How
the Music Begins, Notre Dame de Grass, the finest pure-bluegrass band to ever
come out of Montreal, offers “a textbook example of
everything a traditional bluegrass fan would want in an album. There’s some
excellent original material, some traditional standards, some outstanding
instrumentals, and some gospel, all played and sung within the standard
bluegrass instrumentation and vocal styles defined by Bill Monroe and other first-generation bluegrassers like the Stanley Brothers and Flatt & Scruggs.”

1 comment:

About Me

I'm an editor, writer and broadcaster now based in Ottawa who has written about folk and roots music since the 1970s for Sing Out! Magazine and the Montreal Gazette and other Canadian newspapers. My radio show, Folk Roots/Folk Branches, was on CKUT in Montreal from 1994-2007. I'm now one of the rotating hosts of Saturday Morning on CKCU in Ottawa where my programming is based on the Folk Roots/Folk Branches format I developed at CKUT. I'm also one of the occasional co-hosts of Canadian Spaces on CKCU. In the 1970s and ‘80s I ran a folk club, the Golem, and produced most of Montreal’s folk-oriented concerts. I also booked tours for Kate & Anna McGarrigle, Priscilla Herdman, Rosalie Sorrels, Mason Daring & Jeanie Stahl, Bill Staines, Guy Van Duser & Billy Novick and Dakota Dave Hull & Sean Blackburn. In 2014, I was the recipient of the Ottawa Folk Festival's Helen Verger Award for "significant, sustained contributions to folk/roots music in Canada." In 2017, I was one of the inaugural inductees into the Folk DJ Hall of Fame created by Folk Alliance International.